File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 1030


From: Patsloane-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 16:16:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: PLC: RE: Art & Truth


> The Platonist is doomed always to a theory of art as imitation, in which it
>  must needs be inferior to the "creation" it imitates (human nature, the
>  eternal verities, whatever). 

George,

<Both> Plato and Aristotle assume that art imitates nature, though of course
it need not. I forget if it was the Poetics or the Metaphysics where
Aristotle says that human beings delight in works of imitation.  

Dante has a nice put-down of Plato in either Inf. 11 or 18 (forgot which).
 He has Virgil define art as the grandchild of creation.  The
implication--are you going to say a grandchild is inferior because an
"imitation of an imitation" (of his grandparent)? Question is rhetorical.
Answer is no. So much for Plato's ideas about art. Case closed.

pat sloane:



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